Great Falls stores are hiring for holidays now

Checkout lines wrapped around the store at Target on Black Friday. For the second year, Target will open with doorbuster sales on the evening of Thanksgiving.
TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO/RION SANDERS Checkout lines wrap around the store at Target on Black Friday in Great Falls. TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS Checkout lines wrap around the store at Target on Friday morning.
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Bright orange and yellow leaves are still floating from trees, the hunt for Halloween costumes and candy is still almost two weeks away and Daylight Savings Time won't end until Nov. 2, for crying out loud.

But retail stores, restaurants and shipping outlets are well into hiring extra temporary employees for the holiday season between mid-November and late December.

"You should start approaching employers now if you're looking to pick up some extra cash by working temporarily over the holidays," said Lee Reynolds, placement supervisor for the Great Falls Job Service. "As soon as Halloween is over, Christmas displays will start popping up in stores, and by that time it may be too late to apply for such work. Many retailers will have already filled all or most of their temp job openings."

Stores and restaurants post their job openings early with Job Service or more commonly on their own web sites or overhead signs, he said, and often do interviews and hiring by late October. That way they have time to train clerks and food servers and give them a little experience before the big sales start in mid-November, attracting shoppers and diners.

"We are gearing up for a great holiday season," said Naomi Winters, a Target manager.

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The Great Falls store began interviewing for its temporary holiday jobs this week and will complete most of its holiday hiring by the first week of November, she said.

The local store expects to hire 25 to 30 extra employees this year, about the same as last year, she said.

"We like to have a big work force on hand so we can be flexible in scheduling during this busy period," Winters added.

"We hire mostly for seasonal cashiers, seasonal sales floor clerks and seasonal flow team members who help unload trucks and stock shelves," she said. "We're seeking people who are upbeat, guest-oriented and available to work weekends and holidays." Store managers try to give employees the amount of hours they seek, from 16 to 35 hours a week, she said. Everybody may work longer on a few of the busiest shopping days.

The holiday staffing level at U.S. retail stores is expected to be about 2 percentage points higher than last year and the most since 1999, during the height of the dot.com boom.

In its annual holiday hiring forecast the consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas projected U.S. retailers will add at least 800,000 workers to their payrolls during the last three months of the year. That's a boost over last year's 786,200 temporary seasonal jobs and the most since 1999, when U.S. retail stores hired nearly 850,000 workers.

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It also would represent a continued climb since late 2008, the worst year of the recession for temp holiday hiring, when retailers hired only 325,000 workers for the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping season.

The consulting firm cited "continued employment gains across all industries and increased consumer spending" as reasons for the projected gain.

"The last two years saw seasonal hiring return to pre-recession levels," said John Challenger, the consulting firm's chief executive. "This year holiday spending will undoubtedly benefit from the fact that U.S. payrolls are increasing by an average of 215,000 new workers per month. That translates into more people with jobs and money in their wallets, which means more holiday spending money."

"As more people do their holiday shopping over the internet, the need for extra workers on the sales floors at malls and department stores may decline," he said, noting that Target cut seasonal hiring by 20 percent to 70,000 last year, due in part to more online shopping.

JC Penney Great Falls store leader Edward Larson said his store will hire about 14 part-time seasonal workers this year, a sizeable number since the store has about 42 regular employees. It's also about twice as many as Larson hired last year, indicating expectations for big holiday sales.

He expects to do the bulk of the hiring by the first and second week of November in order to provide training before big sales start.

"The holidays are a big peak for us, with more traffic, more sales and longer hours," Larson said.

Larson said he is looking to hire sales support staff, who work early morning shifts receiving and processing merchandise and placing it on the floor, as well as merchandise, jewelry and footwear specialists who do sales.

"Prior experience is not always required," he said, "but is extremely helpful in specialties such as jewelry and footwear sales."

Penney's has a fringe benefit that the temp employees appreciate, he added: a 25 percent associate's discount on purchases.

Larson said the local Penney's styling salon is hiring four additional workers state-certified in cosmetology because of increased holiday season business.

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"We tend to keep them on after the holidays, because they've built up their customer base," he said.

Deb Hudson, managing partner of the Golden Corral, said she is hiring a few extra workers now, but tends to expand the hours of current high school and college employees to help handle the increased holiday traffic during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.

"High school students can usually work 20 hours a week during this period, twice as many hours as during the normal school year," she said. "A lot of college kids returning to Great Falls for holiday breaks need the money and are happy to work close to 40-hour weeks."

Angie Bruskotter, owner of the downtown Candy Masterpiece, said she completed hiring two extra customer service representatives by late September in time to provide extra training before the store's busy season starts.

"I want them to do multiple things, not just serve as cashiers," she said. "They show customers around, stock dozens of bins and make special gift boxes and 'bags of bags' – each decorative displays with several types of candy."

Their presence allows Bruskotter and her small regular crew more time to make candy and chocolates during November, a busy month, and December, when store sales "are huge and account for four normal months of sales in less than four weeks."